The Catholic Organization for Life and Family is warning that Ontario doctors’ conscience rights are under threat as the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario undertakes a public consultation on its policy.
COLF, co-founded by the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Knights of Columbus, is urging Canadians to respond by the August 5 deadline.
“No physician should be forced to act against his or her conscience by providing health care services, for example, contraception, abortion, or sterilization, contrary to their moral and religious beliefs,” the organization said in a statement Wednesday.
The College is reviewing its current policy in light of physicians’ legal obligations under the Ontario Human Rights Code as it affects the religious and moral beliefs of both doctor and patient.
In 2008, a similar policy review by the College very nearly resulted in a serious threat to conscience rights within the practice of medicine in Ontario. The original draft of the 2008 policy revisions would have prevented health professionals from exercising their conscience rights under threat of losing their license.
However, the College backtracked after protests by public leaders, including Ottawa’s Archbishop Terrence Prendergast and Rabbi Reuven Bulka, and a stinging condemnation of the draft policy by the Ontario Medical Association.
According to the OMA at the time, “physicians maintain a right to exercise their own moral judgment and freedom of choice in making decisions regarding medical care.” It added that the College should “not insert itself into the interpretation of human rights statutes.”
According to COLF’s latest statement, “This time again, the conscience rights of medical practitioners are threatened.”
The pro-family group's comments to the CPSO on the current public consultation stress that the first among the rights recognized and guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms are the rights to freedom of conscience and of religion.
“These rights, inalienable and universal, derive from the unique dignity of the human person and constitute the bedrock on which all other human rights rest, the foundation of every truly free society,” COLF wrote to the College.
“By all but the most obtuse of observers, the suppression of these most fundamental of rights is immediately recognized as the common thread, the unifying theme, of human history’s darkest chapters.”
COLF points out that, in its desire to ensure equal access to services covered by Canada’s national health care system by creating a policy forcing doctors to provide procedures or services which their consciences find repugnant, the CPSO “is blind to the testimony of human history and fails to recognize that the right to conscientious objection is guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and upheld by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”
“This suggestion fails to recognize,” the pro-family group states, “that the rights to freedom of conscience and religion trump any perceived ‘right’ to particular medical services.”
The CPSO's public consultation website has four methods of providing the College with comments on their current policy: by discussion forum, email, regular mail, or a brief online survey.
The College is also running a poll on it website about the issue. As of publication 56 percent of the nearly 15,000 respondents voted in favour of conscience rights.
The deadline for public input is August 5, 2014. To add your comment to the CPSO public consultation, visit their website here.
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